סַמְּכוּנִי בָּאֲשִׁישׁוֹת רַפְּדוּנִי בַּתַּפּוּחִים כִּי חוֹלַת אַהֲבָה אָנִי
In Israel, you really mean it when you say "מה נשתנה הלילה הזה, מכל הלילות." That's because, unlike the Jews who live everywhere else in the world, Jews living in Israel celebrate the Jewish festivals only one day; "הלילה הזה" really does mean "הלילה הזה" (this night) rather than "הלילה הזה וגם המחר." (tonight, and also tomorrow). I know that I've mentioned this fact before on my blog, but it makes an even greater difference on Pesach, which is probably the most ritual-laden of the Jewish festivals. This year, for the first time ever, I performed the seder only once. I was invited by Galit (my host-mother from Rosh Hashanah) to celebrate the first night and day of Pesach at her parents', which was very generous of them. The invitation made me feel as if there really are Israelis other than my students who are happy that I am spending the year here, and who enjoy my company.
Alex is traveling in Europe, and Veta is with her family and friends in Chaifa, leaving me alone in the apartment to hunt for Chametz. I'm a very hungry person, and happy to report that I had already eaten virtually all of the chametz. I swept up the rest, and while I did so, thought about past years' searches for chametz, back when I was house manager at the CJL at Cornell. One year, I remember, Peninah and I found a whole loaf of bread in the lounge downstairs.
Galit picked me up from my apartment on Monday afternoon, and I went to the local Sepharadi synagogue with Micha'el, her husband, and Saba Eliezer, her father. We returned to Saba and Savta's house at a little before 8:00 pm, and began the seder. There were about twelve of us seated around the seder table. For the first time, I met Galit's younger brother and sister, the latter of whom got married in August only a little bit after Andrew and Allison. As the only guest present, I received a lot of attention. The others were genuinely interested in learning about where I was from and about what I was doing in Israel. I managed to get by on my Hebrew, which felt fantastic. The Haggadah was, of course, entirely in Hebrew (except for the occasional Aramaic passages), and I could feel my practice paying off, although I did stumble when it was my turn to read. Peninah once told me before that the Jewish regional and family traditions manifest more visibly during the seder than during any other time of year, and I think that she's right. For instance, there seems to be an annual joke in my host family about on whose turn the passage about the Wicked Child falls (Galit's younger sister read it this year), and even though Shiloh, the youngest, recited the Four Questions, the rest of the table sang along with him in order to help him learn the words. Tamir complained to me that he never has never found the afikomen before (he subsequently found it in the laundry basket this year), and Or complained to me that, last year, even though she found the afikomen, she didn't receive any prize (apparently, they don't engage in the fierce bargaining that goes on in my house). Whereas American Jews tend to use horseradish as maror, this year, I consumed -- lettuce. Yes, that's right, lettuce. I do not know who decided that lettuce is a bitter herb. My only guess is that whoever made this decision made it long before the modern, bland strain of lettuce was bred, because, my friends, lettuce does not remind me of the bitterness of slavery. Nothing reminds you of the pains and hardships of forced labor quite like a eye-watering, face-reddening, throat-burning, palate-peeling, mouthful of freshly-ground horseradish, especially if your Mother pounded it out of a root that she pulled out of the garden just a couple of hours ago.
Also, for those of you who remember the slight misunderstanding that occurred back in Rosh Hashannah concerning my, er, dietary choices, I'm past the point of no return, and ate more meat during the festive meal than I have in the last several years combined. Yes, I've been a vegetarian since the end of Middle School, but if I now express this view to my host family, it will become very difficult and embarrassing to explain everything. Again, I'm just trying to prioritize politeness and good behavior, and if that happens to mean that with this one family, on Jewish holidays, that I will be eating meat, so be it. As it is, it turns out that I really, really like the taste of cooked vegetables wrapped in cow intestines.
The last words of the hagadah, recited annually, are "לשנה הבאה בירושלים." This year, those words had special significance to me. I managed to make it all the way here, to Israel, from the United States. I had hoped to be able to spend more time here, continuing to work as a teacher and educator. Unfortunately, I was recently turned down by the program that I had hoped would give me an opportunity to continue my work here. In other words, with no job, I have no future here in Israel, and must return to the United States, where it is equally unlikely that I will manage to find a job for this coming year. When I said "לשנה הבאה בירושלים," it felt more like an exceptional request than like a prediction, or even a reasonable suggestion. Next year, maybe, just maybe, I'll still be in Israel, and, even if so, I probably won't be in Jerusalem (in fact, I'd rather like to be back with Saba and Savta -- I have an open invitation). But if I am in Israel, it's because I'll be making something of myself. I'll be working a real job, speaking Hebrew, and making a real difference with my students. So I repeat, with emphasis, "לשנה הבאה בירושלים."
After the seder's conclusion, Micha'el and Saba Eliezer recited all of Shir Hashirim, making me reminisce, of Shir Hashirim at second seder two years ago, the most memorable recitation of my life (מַה יָּפִית וּמַה נָּעַמְתְּ אַהֲבָה בַּתַּעֲנוּגִים זֹאת קוֹמָתֵךְ דָּמְתָה לְתָמָר). Then, Galit and Micha'el, with Shiloh in tow, brought me nearly all the way back to my apartment on Yoseftal, so that I wouldn't get lost trying to find my way. It was nearly midnight by this time, but there were plenty of people out. On the way, I thought about how comforting it feels to be in a country where most of the people around me are celebrating the same holidays, and that my late-night walks home fall on the same nights as everyone else's.
The next morning, I walked to the synagogue, and arrived at Ashrei. Synagogue had begun "late" at 8:00 am, because of the seder the night before, as opposed to the regular starting time of 6:30 am. By pure coincidence, I ended up sitting next to a seventeen-year-old boy whose family was hosting my fellow volunteer Harry for Pesach! Afterwards, I walked back to Saba Eliezer's apartment, and spent time with the family until lunchtime. Once again, excellent food; once again, lots of meat. At one point, the conversation turned to how much Americans love meat (Israelis perceive Americans as subsisting mostly on hamburgers), and I demurred from commenting. I returned back to my apartment for some reading of the book of moral philosophy that Eli lent to me, which is slow going, but enjoyable. I passed out while reading, but woke up in time for minchah. After arvit and the beginning of the counting of the Omer, I returned to my hosts' house. They had more guests for their (I was very happy to see) dairy dinner. Before we ate, Saba asked me to read the label on a bottle of medicine treating low blood-sugar. I was incredibly happy to be able to put my English-fluency to good use. Even though Galit and Micha'el speak excellent English, this was all medical English, partly in fine-print. I'm amazed that it's even possible to sell medicine with labels in foreign languages here. Using medicine incorrectly because of a language barrier could cause serious harm, even death. I wonder why the pharmaceutical industry works this way? The point is, I read that the medicine did indeed do what Saba had been told that it did, and also told him the dosage size, and the number of doses. Meanwhile, the children were playing video games, all of which were in English. It's now easy to see why some Israeli children are able to pick up English so easily from the media around them. Galit drove me home afterwards, at around 10:00.
It's now Chol Hamo'ed, and I'm enjoying some time to rest. I've made some surprisingly good egg salad, thanks largely to the dill that Alex left in the refrigerator, but I am nevertheless very much looking forward to being able to eat lentils, chickpeas, and rice again. It's hard to be an Ashkenazic vegetarian at this time of year, especially with my income so modest.
And, meanwhile, it seems as if one of my favorite people back in Ithaca was hospitalized over Pesach.
רפואה שלמה לך ולכל החולים בעולם.
~JD
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Monday, April 14, 2014
Sar-El: Maps, Paratroopers, and Chumus (and Superstrings)
I've recently returned from five days' volunteering at Beit Lid army base, located not far from Netanya. During this time, I was part of the Sar-El corps, working for the Logistics division of the Israeli Defense Force (known in Israel by its Hebrew acronym צה"ל), in a base for members of the Paratroopers (צנחנים in Hebrew). We were scheduled to leave from Ramla mid-morning on Sunday, but ended up leaving late-morning, because of a confusion of where we were supposed to meet our guides. "We," by, does not include all of the (already severely-diminished) members Israel Way's ITF and Community Involvement volunteering groups from Ramla, but includes just Ari, Florencia, Julia, Juliana, Shira, Melisa, Noah, and me. We picked up Veta on our hour-long trip to the base (I cheered as she got on the minibus), bringing us to a total of nine volunteers: seven women and two men.
On our first day at the base, we were introduced to the soldiers with whom we were assigned to work, fed, given our bunks and uniforms, and told the basics of our task. We also began our work, which I'll presently describe. It felt unusual for me to be putting on a uniform. Although my paternal grandfather was a mapmaker in World War II, and one of my maternal ancestors had the unpleasant job of collecting Confederate corpses from the battlefields of the American Civil War, I don't come from a military family, by any stretch of the imagination. True, I wasn't a soldier, I was just wearing the uniform, and, even more true, not everyone who wears the IDF uniform is involved some way in combat, let alone a combat solider, but the uniform still didn't feel right on me.
As I mentioned before, we worked for the Logistics division while on base. Inglorious work, but important for military preparedness, etc. The task that the base had ready for us was -- folding maps. That's right; we had literally several thousand maps, printed on poster-size laminated paper, that needed to be neatly folded, stacked, bagged, tagged, and transported to their holding space. There were far too many rolls of maps for the nine of us, plus the group of soldiers who intermittently worked alongside us, to have any hope of finishing by Thursday morning, the set time of our departure. The way we would agonizingly turn a pile of tightly-rolled sheets of a paper into orderly stacks, only to have another pile of rolls dropped off in its place at times made the entire task feel Sisyphean. We tended to work in teams of two or three, in which the first person made the initial fold or folds, and the second and third completed the work. Creasing the folds became quite difficult by the end, and I saw several people around me using their cellphones to press down the maps' edges, in order to keep them flat. I had some very good conversations with the other volunteers, particularly Florencia, as well as with the soldiers, during this mind-numbing task. At one point, one of the group-members got a call from a friend in the army, who said that what we were doing was pointless, and that nobody cared about our work. This really made me doubt the value of my work. The work, I know, would have been done anyway, but my members of the Reserve forces rather than unpaid volunteers. In my mind, that at least means that I saved the IDF a few shekels in Reserve pay, and some miluimnikim the bother of hauling themselves out to base in order to perform an insipid task.
Some of the soldiers with whom we were working, such as Nir and Noam, spoke English quite well. Other soldiers, as well as most of the soldiers with whom we spoke around base, did not. I spoke in whatever language made the Israelis most comfortable. I got in quite a few funny conversations in Hebrew. I hope that my conversational Hebrew is improving; sometimes I'm not so certain that I have enough Hebrew-language interactions outside of school. Most of these conversations took place in the mess hall, which was also in the process of purging itself of all chametz in time for Pesach. I ate better at the mess hall than I had in weeks (months?). It's really hard for me to complain about all-you-can-eat chumus and Israeli salad.
Sar-El evening activities were interesting, and I wish that I had had the opportunity to be around for more of them. On Monday night, Suzi, our madrichah, put us through a couple of hours of imitation tiranut (basic training), which was not nearly as physically demanding as the real thing. Sure, the very first thing, Noah and I needed to do push-ups for looking in the wrong direction, and there was some running around involved, but nothing too severe. On Tuesday night, after Suzi helped us sort out our different divisions of the IDF (the organization is rather different than the tri-fold Army-Navy-Airforce division of the U.S. armed forces'), the paratroopers with whom we had been working performed some combat drills for us, showing us how they take cover, move tactically, shoot in different body positions, etc.
Throughout my time at Sar-El, Noah coached me through better forms of upper-body exercises. He's quite knowledgeable about such things, and I think that I'm going to be able to get at least slightly stronger. Pretty much, I've been doing what I always do, and have been working harder without working smarter. No, I'm not going to be as muscular as Noah anytime soon (or ever), but I'll have a little bit more upper-body strength, with patience. As an example of the intensity of these workouts, my the soreness in my legs resulting from from Wednesday's squat sets did not subside until Monday morning. I guess I need to spend more time strengthening those muscle groups.
On Thursday morning, after breakfast, Roi, the officer of our group (who spoke with flawless English, by the way), kindly drove us off base, where we caught first a bus, and then a train, to arrive back at Ramla. Veta and a few of the other volunteers headed off in other directions. I'm now sitting in my apartment, alone, preparing for Pesach. Veta is in Chaifa, and Alex is in Europe, as are many other members of our group. I'm looking forward to Seder tonight, which will be my first in Israel. Galit and Micha'el (Tamir's parents) have invited me to come with them to Galit's parents' seder. This should be fun (note: this is the same family who welcomed Rose, Ben, and me to their house on Rosh Hashannah and on Yom Kippur break-fast).
By the way, the entire time at the base, I was burrowing my way through Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, which Eli had lent to me two weeks ago. It's very hard to put down, and I very frequently found myself thinking about general relativity, quantum mechanics, and vibrating strings while I was busy folding maps. Eli asked me for a review of the book, and I thought that as long as I was writing it, I might as well share it with the rest of you on JDWrit. The book argues for the acceptance of Superstring Theory, especially as modified by M-Theory in 1995, as the most likely theory explaining the working structure of the universe. The way we are used to being taught is based upon the Standard Model, and the main difference between superstring theory and the Standard Model is that the superstring theory replaces the Standard Model's point particles with tiny, vibrating strings. This causes some key differences, such as the fact that this model offers a "bouncing" theory of the Big Bang because it prevents the universe from shrinking below Planck Length, that it unifies quantum mechanics and general relativity, that it "postdicts" gravity, that it can allow for superstrings to get "wrapped" around spacial dimensions at key points in the evolution of the universe, etc. Unfortunately, the book was first published back in 1999, and a lot has happened in the past 15 years of physics! Even someone outside of the world of physics such as myself heard about the discovery of the Higgs Boson a couple of years ago, for instance. According to the Preface to the 2nd edition (written in 2003), some of the less extended spatial dimensions described in the book (M-Theory explains the universe as having 10 spatial and 1 time dimension) are not as "small" as believed when the the book was written. Also, it helped me sort out some of my more basic physics, such as special and general relativity, and quantum mechanics. The last book that I read about q.m. was very poorly written, and I walked away with very little information. There's a lot of good stuff, well worth the ride, although, I admit, I still don't fully understand things like the space-tearing coniform flop-transitions of Calabi-Yau spaces. Highly recommended for style and content, although the content might by now be slightly dated.
Chag Sameach and love from Israel to you all!
~JD
On our first day at the base, we were introduced to the soldiers with whom we were assigned to work, fed, given our bunks and uniforms, and told the basics of our task. We also began our work, which I'll presently describe. It felt unusual for me to be putting on a uniform. Although my paternal grandfather was a mapmaker in World War II, and one of my maternal ancestors had the unpleasant job of collecting Confederate corpses from the battlefields of the American Civil War, I don't come from a military family, by any stretch of the imagination. True, I wasn't a soldier, I was just wearing the uniform, and, even more true, not everyone who wears the IDF uniform is involved some way in combat, let alone a combat solider, but the uniform still didn't feel right on me.
As I mentioned before, we worked for the Logistics division while on base. Inglorious work, but important for military preparedness, etc. The task that the base had ready for us was -- folding maps. That's right; we had literally several thousand maps, printed on poster-size laminated paper, that needed to be neatly folded, stacked, bagged, tagged, and transported to their holding space. There were far too many rolls of maps for the nine of us, plus the group of soldiers who intermittently worked alongside us, to have any hope of finishing by Thursday morning, the set time of our departure. The way we would agonizingly turn a pile of tightly-rolled sheets of a paper into orderly stacks, only to have another pile of rolls dropped off in its place at times made the entire task feel Sisyphean. We tended to work in teams of two or three, in which the first person made the initial fold or folds, and the second and third completed the work. Creasing the folds became quite difficult by the end, and I saw several people around me using their cellphones to press down the maps' edges, in order to keep them flat. I had some very good conversations with the other volunteers, particularly Florencia, as well as with the soldiers, during this mind-numbing task. At one point, one of the group-members got a call from a friend in the army, who said that what we were doing was pointless, and that nobody cared about our work. This really made me doubt the value of my work. The work, I know, would have been done anyway, but my members of the Reserve forces rather than unpaid volunteers. In my mind, that at least means that I saved the IDF a few shekels in Reserve pay, and some miluimnikim the bother of hauling themselves out to base in order to perform an insipid task.
Some of the soldiers with whom we were working, such as Nir and Noam, spoke English quite well. Other soldiers, as well as most of the soldiers with whom we spoke around base, did not. I spoke in whatever language made the Israelis most comfortable. I got in quite a few funny conversations in Hebrew. I hope that my conversational Hebrew is improving; sometimes I'm not so certain that I have enough Hebrew-language interactions outside of school. Most of these conversations took place in the mess hall, which was also in the process of purging itself of all chametz in time for Pesach. I ate better at the mess hall than I had in weeks (months?). It's really hard for me to complain about all-you-can-eat chumus and Israeli salad.
Sar-El evening activities were interesting, and I wish that I had had the opportunity to be around for more of them. On Monday night, Suzi, our madrichah, put us through a couple of hours of imitation tiranut (basic training), which was not nearly as physically demanding as the real thing. Sure, the very first thing, Noah and I needed to do push-ups for looking in the wrong direction, and there was some running around involved, but nothing too severe. On Tuesday night, after Suzi helped us sort out our different divisions of the IDF (the organization is rather different than the tri-fold Army-Navy-Airforce division of the U.S. armed forces'), the paratroopers with whom we had been working performed some combat drills for us, showing us how they take cover, move tactically, shoot in different body positions, etc.
Throughout my time at Sar-El, Noah coached me through better forms of upper-body exercises. He's quite knowledgeable about such things, and I think that I'm going to be able to get at least slightly stronger. Pretty much, I've been doing what I always do, and have been working harder without working smarter. No, I'm not going to be as muscular as Noah anytime soon (or ever), but I'll have a little bit more upper-body strength, with patience. As an example of the intensity of these workouts, my the soreness in my legs resulting from from Wednesday's squat sets did not subside until Monday morning. I guess I need to spend more time strengthening those muscle groups.
On Thursday morning, after breakfast, Roi, the officer of our group (who spoke with flawless English, by the way), kindly drove us off base, where we caught first a bus, and then a train, to arrive back at Ramla. Veta and a few of the other volunteers headed off in other directions. I'm now sitting in my apartment, alone, preparing for Pesach. Veta is in Chaifa, and Alex is in Europe, as are many other members of our group. I'm looking forward to Seder tonight, which will be my first in Israel. Galit and Micha'el (Tamir's parents) have invited me to come with them to Galit's parents' seder. This should be fun (note: this is the same family who welcomed Rose, Ben, and me to their house on Rosh Hashannah and on Yom Kippur break-fast).
By the way, the entire time at the base, I was burrowing my way through Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, which Eli had lent to me two weeks ago. It's very hard to put down, and I very frequently found myself thinking about general relativity, quantum mechanics, and vibrating strings while I was busy folding maps. Eli asked me for a review of the book, and I thought that as long as I was writing it, I might as well share it with the rest of you on JDWrit. The book argues for the acceptance of Superstring Theory, especially as modified by M-Theory in 1995, as the most likely theory explaining the working structure of the universe. The way we are used to being taught is based upon the Standard Model, and the main difference between superstring theory and the Standard Model is that the superstring theory replaces the Standard Model's point particles with tiny, vibrating strings. This causes some key differences, such as the fact that this model offers a "bouncing" theory of the Big Bang because it prevents the universe from shrinking below Planck Length, that it unifies quantum mechanics and general relativity, that it "postdicts" gravity, that it can allow for superstrings to get "wrapped" around spacial dimensions at key points in the evolution of the universe, etc. Unfortunately, the book was first published back in 1999, and a lot has happened in the past 15 years of physics! Even someone outside of the world of physics such as myself heard about the discovery of the Higgs Boson a couple of years ago, for instance. According to the Preface to the 2nd edition (written in 2003), some of the less extended spatial dimensions described in the book (M-Theory explains the universe as having 10 spatial and 1 time dimension) are not as "small" as believed when the the book was written. Also, it helped me sort out some of my more basic physics, such as special and general relativity, and quantum mechanics. The last book that I read about q.m. was very poorly written, and I walked away with very little information. There's a lot of good stuff, well worth the ride, although, I admit, I still don't fully understand things like the space-tearing coniform flop-transitions of Calabi-Yau spaces. Highly recommended for style and content, although the content might by now be slightly dated.
Chag Sameach and love from Israel to you all!
~JD
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Unexpected Surprises in Israel
"וְסַבּוֹתִי אֲנִי לְיַאֵשׁ אֶת לִבִּי עַל כָּל הֶעָמָל שֶׁעָמַלְתִּי תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ"
There's a large laminated map of the world in my English room, attached to the wall with Velcro, which I frequently detach, place on the table in front of my students, and use in order to show them world geography. My first question is always "איפה ישראל, where's Israel?" I have received a large variety of responses, but the most common one is one of ignorance. Some of them not only don't know on which continent Israel is located, but don't even know to which continent they are pointing on the map. A few of them can find Israel after a minute or so, but I don't think that a single one knows where it is located ahead of time. Once I do eventually point it out to the students, about three-fourths of the time, the response is the same: "איזה קטן, how small!" The students at my school do not realize just how tiny a country Israel is, in the wide, wide world.
According to 2012 statistics, Israel accounts for only around 0.1% of the world population; comparatively, China accounts for 19.2%, India for 17.6%, the United States for 4.5%, Russia for 2%, and Argentina for .58% Another statistic might help: when Ovadiah Yosef was laid to rest back in October, the crowds at his funeral might have made up as much as 10% of Israel's population (20-25% of which is non-Jewish). Related to this ignorance of Israel's size is the fact that many of my students do not realize how few people in the world speak Hebrew, and, therefore and how little the language is worth when traveling internationally and when interacting with non-Israelis. (Note: to be fair, American college students don't know too much about Israel, either, but to be fair, it was quite complicated when I left for Israel in the summer of 2013, and I don't expect anything to become any simpler anytime soon).
The story of the map is just an anecdote, and it would help to put things in perspective. My students are 3rd-8th grade students in a National Religious school located in a small, backwards town in Israel's Mercaz (מֶרְכָּז), or Center. The Mercaz is a very politically conservative region; most of the political posters that I saw were for the Likud party or the Shas party (it's an interesting feeling to be confronted with the late R. Ovadiah Yosef's intense gaze, magnified several times over in size, every time you exit your apartment building). Around 50-60% of the students, who are without exception Jewish, are of Ethiopian heritage, although most of them do not speak Amharic. Although all of the students at the school are expected to adhere by certain modes of dress (as I mentioned in my last blog post), do not imagine in your minds the black hats, coats, and skirts of Me'ah Sha'arim. Although many of my students are at some level observant (their schoolday does begin with communal prayer, for instance), I know for certain that a few of them are not from Shomer-Shabbat households. Non-observant parents' reasons for choosing to send their children to a religious school that is one of the lowest-performing in the country is a point which I will address later. Many of my students have very traditional Biblical Jewish names: I lot of my male students have names such as Yitzchak, Ya'akov, Avi, Yosef, Natanel, Yonatan, etc. When I fist told Eli about this, he was amazed, until he remembered that most of my students are Ethiopian Jews, who are apparently the only group of Jews among whom such names are still common. This fact is very much in accord with a joke told to my group of volunteers by R. Sharon Shalom (see two posts ago), that when Ethiopian Jews made Aliyah, immigration officials counted them off in groups of three, naming them "Avraham, Yitzchak, Ya'akov; Avraham, Yitzchak, Ya'akov; etc." Still, many students have names that are slightly more "Israeli," such as Orel, Aviel, Maor, Nitai, etc. Still, I see "-el" appearing in names much more frequently than I see, say, "-tal," probably because this is a religious school. Among the staff, the most common name is probably Tzipi, short for Tzipora (two teachers plus the principal all go by Tzipi).
Among most of my school students, I notice a real lack of ambition, and I am not the only one. One of my former housemates, Tznoach, had the same feeling at his school. This is not universal; one of my favorite students, a seventh grader of an Ethiopian family, has told me that he wants to be the best soccer player (he didn't specify whether he meant the best in Israel, the best in the whole world, or the best ever, and I don't care); I think that that is a wonderful dream, coming from a 12-year-old. However, most don't feel the same way. Tznoach always told me that most of his students are happy to work at a falafel stand in Ramla. I do not want to criticize this job; there's nothing wrong with working retail, or working at or managing a restaurant, but it's surprising to hear such unambitious self-expectations from kids; Israel has produced some amazing minds over the last few decades (if you have a smartphone, try counting how many of your useful apps were developed by Israelis; you might be surprised), and these students have the potential to become the next generation of engineers, doctors, scientists, educators, and writers. I want them to have that opportunity (that's why I'm volunteering in a school), but they need to want it, too. At one point, a student complained about studying with me to his family members, and, when one of them encouraged him to try to listen so that he can learn English, and one day travel the world, he responded that he never intends to leave his country. Passing over the myopia and provincialism of this comment, I'd like to state that knowledge of English can be an invaluable skill, even if one never leaves Israel. For instance, most educated adult Israelis can speak English quite well, and many of them need it for their jobs, even if their jobs never involves them leaving Israel. Carmel (האהוב), for instance, has never visited the United States, but because his job involves shepherding around a bunch of clueless Americans (such as myself), needs to (and does) speak fluent English for his job. Carmel's job is exceptional, though (so is Carmel, by the way <3); most Israelis don't need to work with silly anglophones every day, but their jobs still require them to have such a skill. Galit, for instance, the mother of my host family, works in the police department here in Ramla, and needs to be able to speak in English frequently enough that its a job requirement for her. Israelis living in such cities in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, especially if they work in places frequented by foreigners (such as bars and restaurants), need to be able to speak at least passable English, and many Israelis find it personally beneficial to be able to speak English, whether it be to acquire significant others from America, or to enjoy English-language movies, television, and news. The point is, my student's comment that he is never intending to leave Israel, from my point of view, is illogical and meaningless; English can be valuable to him, even if he never leaves his hometown, let alone Israel. Knowledge of English can empower; this is the reason that I came halfway around the world in order to volunteer to teach it. I'm also, here, however, to inspire and to encourage. At my job interview in Chaifa on Wednesday, the presenter, Yoni (a woman's name, coincidentally the same as what my students call me) expressed this common phenomenon among Israeli students: when asked by a teacher to name their dreams and ambitions, most of them can't come up with anything. Everyone applying to that job, myself included, was there to change that; we all want to our students to ask instead, if they can write down two or three dreams, instead of just one. Maybe, I'll be lucky enough to do just that next year.
כִּי מֶה הֹוֶה לָאָדָם בְּכָל עֲמָלוֹ וּבְרַעְיוֹן לִבּוֹ שְׁהוּא עָמֵל תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ
One of the most prevalent problems I've seen, and students' principal blocks in their learning, is a certain mentality that they have, an unwillingness to admit that they don't know something. If I ask a typical student "do you understand," I will always receive the answer "yes," even if the answer is really "no." This makes it impossible for them to study, because they claim (and, I think, truly believe) that they are already fully fluent in English, even if they cannot even spell their own names in English, let alone understand anything that I say to them. This unwillingness sometimes achieves ridiculous proportions; I once sent a student back to class because he was acting up, but he reported to the teacher (and, I think, believed) that the reason that I had sent him back was because he already knew everything. In another case, a student refused to read a book that I gave to him, because he told me that he had already read it. Upon further investigation, he proved unable to either sound out a single one of the words written on the pages, or tell me what any of them meant (including such words as "the," "a," and "in") when I read them aloud to him. Again, I think that if he had been hooked up to a lie detector machine, he would not have tested positive when he told me that he had read and understood the entire book (which is indeed what he told me, in Hebrew). As terrible as it sounds, and in seeming opposition to my goal of improving students' confidence, feelings of self-worth, and independence, I first need to convince students that they have much to learn, so that they will be willing to work with me. I am thinking about asking the school Rabbi (with whom I am on good terms) to teach his students about Hillel's teaching from Pirkei Avot 2:5 -- "לא הבישן למד," "a person who is easily embarrassed cannot learn."
Another unexpected surprise in Israeli schools is the attitude towards cheating. Every school in which I have studied has anathematized cheating and plagiarism to the highest degree. Being caught cheating on a test would result in a score of zero on that test, plus a call home and possible suspension from school, in the case of grade school and high school; at the college level, plagiarism could result in expulsion from the university. Back at IHS, someone I knew was caught texting in the middle of an important standardized test, and received a zero. My advisor in college, the estimable Prof. Hull, once told me about a tribunal she had sat on for student who had cited a source accurately, but (quite unintentionally) had placed quotation marks too early in her own text, thus implying that some of the source's words were really her own. In contrast to this rigid nonacceptance of cheating in American education, Israeli students cheat quite frequently. They do this mostly by (quite unabashedly) solutions while in the middle of taking a test. There is even a feeling of obligation among stronger students to "help" other students in this way; one of my strongest students once complained to me about how busy he was "helping" other students after he had finished his own test; another time, a student yelled at me for trying to take his test away. He had been feeding answers to his classmate, and, when I told him that that was unacceptable, he replied to me that the other student had asked (as if he were therefore obligated to give his classmate the answers). I have had students not just become angry and upset with me, but genuinely yell at me, when I don't give them test solutions. I have seen students rag on teachers for solutions or hints, because they know that, sometimes, teachers simply cave in (and, really, what teacher wants his or her students to fail? You need an iron will to teach). My roommates do not encounter this level of absurdity at their school, I know, perhaps because their school is at a somewhat higher academic level than mine (theirs is not a religious school). For me, days on which tests are given are the worst, because I am in constant antagonism to the widespread cheating that goes on throughout the testing period. Test days bring out the worst in my students, which is painful for student and teacher alike. By contrast, Veta has told me that the days on which she gives tests to students are the easiest, because even students who normally behave poorly act docilely.
וְשָׂנֵאתִי אֶת הַחַיִּים כִּי רַע עָלַי הַמַּעֲשֶׂה שֶׁנַּעֲשָׂה תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ כִּי הַכֹּל הֶבֶל וּרְעוּת רוּחַ
Of everything I see at my school, though, nothing is as painful to me as the self-loathing in which some of my students engage. I see it only among the eighth-grade males, and it probably has something to do with going through puberty. One student, for instance, upon my suggestion that he could do well on the next test, if he studied, insisted that he never does well, because he is stupid (in response, I had him write "I am smart" for himself on the first and last pages of his notebook). I have seen other students act rather cruelly to this student in particular, making fun of the fact that he is fat (which led me, at first to very strongly identify with him and his problem -- I was also fat when I was in middle school). Still this is individual self-hatred, and it is an entirely different scale than the self-hatred that I see among this student's Ethiopian Jewish classmates. Before I go any further, I need to clarify something: in my experience, my Ethiopian Jewish students are just as likely to be strong or weak as the others. I really can't notice any social or academic difference between students of different regional descent in any of my grades. Sometimes the Ethiopians are closest to other Ethiopians; at other times, they are closer to non-Ethiopians. Bear in mind that even though they have different skin tones all of the students in Rambam are Jewish, and all of them are at least partially conscious of their shared Jewishness. The eighth grade male Ethiopians, however, have formed an almost gang-like consciousness; part of this consciousness is that they treat themselves as if they are animals. Quite recently, I had one of my eighth-grade student stare me down, snarl at me, and try to intimidate me, and I was quite worried that he was going to try to bite me. He did not, but he, as well as his classmates, are frequently found wandering around the halls of the school picking fights, frequently with students younger and smaller than themselves. They see themselves as sub-human because of their skin, and refer to each other by the Hebrew slur Ethiopian, sometimes also using the American slur, too, the only English that some of them seem to have absorbed. I worry constantly about what is going to happen to these students when they get older, when they join the army, and when each one of them finds himself with an M-16 slung over his shoulder. Will they do the right thing with that power? Will they even have a concept of "the right thing" left in them four years down the road? I have tried sometimes to spend time with them, to make them feel less miserable in school, and have usually had my offers thrown back in my face. At this point, they don't want to have anything to do with me, and I can't force them to do so. Meanwhile, I look at my seventh-graders, and hope desperately, that they will not adopt the same attitude. I'm not just hoping, though; I'm also teaching them English.
"אֱלֹהִיםשׁוֹפֵט צַדִּיק וְאֵל זֹעֵם בְּכָל יוֹם"
If many of the students in this particular cross-section see themselves as "animals," then many of the other Jews with whom I meet in Israeli society view Arabs as "animals." I am not using this term idly; I have heard an adult man (for whom I have respect) exclaim that the Arabs are animals. The younger generation has picked up on this sentiment from their elders; on my first day at school, while we were waiting at the bus stop for TZ to arrive, a student told me that the Arabs are the cause of the problems in Lod. I know that at least a couple of my students attend Rambam because their parents do not want them to come in contact with Arab children. I cannot fully express how upsetting this is. Because I work at an all-Jewish school (for the record, not by choice, but because it was decided by my program that TZ and I were the best Fellows to teach at Rambam), my main interaction with Arabs here is at the Underground club on Monday evenings. About half of my regular students are Arabs, and my interaction with them differs in no way from my interaction with my non-Arab students. As I mentioned in the last post, I even had a moment of "revenge against the system" when I insisted on holding classes for my Arab students, even though it was technically a Jewish holiday (Shushan Purim), because I'm so sick of not having my own holidays recognized back in the U.S. Perhaps it's because I'm not Israeli, and not as emotionally invested in the country that I can afford to feel this way; I have no grudge against Arabs or against Muslims (most of my Muslim friends from High School and Cornell are non-Arab), yet I am surrounded by a society that does. I have never served in the IDF; nobody in my family has ever been murdered by terrorists, or fallen in one of Israel's historic wars with its Arab neighbors. I'm proud to be a strong Zionist, but this nauseating anger isn't Zionism; it's just hatred.
וַיַּעֲבֹר יְהֹוָה | עַל פָּנָיו וַיִּקְרָא יְהֹוָה | יְהֹוָה אֵל רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם וְרַב חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת
I don't know how to solve this or any of the other problems I am confronted with daily. Right now, I'm continuing to teach, and hoping to open students' minds, just a little bit. It took students long enough to even accept me as Jewish. They had never met (or, I suppose, conceived of) Jews who hadn't already made aliyah to Israel, and, for my first months here, my Judaism was suspect among the students (for instance, they didn't know whether to count me for a minyan, and asked me questions such as "אתה גוי?," and not in the friendliest manner, either). It's not a lot of progress, but it's something. If I am lucky enough to be accepted to the job to which I applied this past week, I will have two to three more years left to make a difference. But I will need to use it well.
חג שמח!
~JD
There's a large laminated map of the world in my English room, attached to the wall with Velcro, which I frequently detach, place on the table in front of my students, and use in order to show them world geography. My first question is always "איפה ישראל, where's Israel?" I have received a large variety of responses, but the most common one is one of ignorance. Some of them not only don't know on which continent Israel is located, but don't even know to which continent they are pointing on the map. A few of them can find Israel after a minute or so, but I don't think that a single one knows where it is located ahead of time. Once I do eventually point it out to the students, about three-fourths of the time, the response is the same: "איזה קטן, how small!" The students at my school do not realize just how tiny a country Israel is, in the wide, wide world.
According to 2012 statistics, Israel accounts for only around 0.1% of the world population; comparatively, China accounts for 19.2%, India for 17.6%, the United States for 4.5%, Russia for 2%, and Argentina for .58% Another statistic might help: when Ovadiah Yosef was laid to rest back in October, the crowds at his funeral might have made up as much as 10% of Israel's population (20-25% of which is non-Jewish). Related to this ignorance of Israel's size is the fact that many of my students do not realize how few people in the world speak Hebrew, and, therefore and how little the language is worth when traveling internationally and when interacting with non-Israelis. (Note: to be fair, American college students don't know too much about Israel, either, but to be fair, it was quite complicated when I left for Israel in the summer of 2013, and I don't expect anything to become any simpler anytime soon).
The story of the map is just an anecdote, and it would help to put things in perspective. My students are 3rd-8th grade students in a National Religious school located in a small, backwards town in Israel's Mercaz (מֶרְכָּז), or Center. The Mercaz is a very politically conservative region; most of the political posters that I saw were for the Likud party or the Shas party (it's an interesting feeling to be confronted with the late R. Ovadiah Yosef's intense gaze, magnified several times over in size, every time you exit your apartment building). Around 50-60% of the students, who are without exception Jewish, are of Ethiopian heritage, although most of them do not speak Amharic. Although all of the students at the school are expected to adhere by certain modes of dress (as I mentioned in my last blog post), do not imagine in your minds the black hats, coats, and skirts of Me'ah Sha'arim. Although many of my students are at some level observant (their schoolday does begin with communal prayer, for instance), I know for certain that a few of them are not from Shomer-Shabbat households. Non-observant parents' reasons for choosing to send their children to a religious school that is one of the lowest-performing in the country is a point which I will address later. Many of my students have very traditional Biblical Jewish names: I lot of my male students have names such as Yitzchak, Ya'akov, Avi, Yosef, Natanel, Yonatan, etc. When I fist told Eli about this, he was amazed, until he remembered that most of my students are Ethiopian Jews, who are apparently the only group of Jews among whom such names are still common. This fact is very much in accord with a joke told to my group of volunteers by R. Sharon Shalom (see two posts ago), that when Ethiopian Jews made Aliyah, immigration officials counted them off in groups of three, naming them "Avraham, Yitzchak, Ya'akov; Avraham, Yitzchak, Ya'akov; etc." Still, many students have names that are slightly more "Israeli," such as Orel, Aviel, Maor, Nitai, etc. Still, I see "-el" appearing in names much more frequently than I see, say, "-tal," probably because this is a religious school. Among the staff, the most common name is probably Tzipi, short for Tzipora (two teachers plus the principal all go by Tzipi).
Among most of my school students, I notice a real lack of ambition, and I am not the only one. One of my former housemates, Tznoach, had the same feeling at his school. This is not universal; one of my favorite students, a seventh grader of an Ethiopian family, has told me that he wants to be the best soccer player (he didn't specify whether he meant the best in Israel, the best in the whole world, or the best ever, and I don't care); I think that that is a wonderful dream, coming from a 12-year-old. However, most don't feel the same way. Tznoach always told me that most of his students are happy to work at a falafel stand in Ramla. I do not want to criticize this job; there's nothing wrong with working retail, or working at or managing a restaurant, but it's surprising to hear such unambitious self-expectations from kids; Israel has produced some amazing minds over the last few decades (if you have a smartphone, try counting how many of your useful apps were developed by Israelis; you might be surprised), and these students have the potential to become the next generation of engineers, doctors, scientists, educators, and writers. I want them to have that opportunity (that's why I'm volunteering in a school), but they need to want it, too. At one point, a student complained about studying with me to his family members, and, when one of them encouraged him to try to listen so that he can learn English, and one day travel the world, he responded that he never intends to leave his country. Passing over the myopia and provincialism of this comment, I'd like to state that knowledge of English can be an invaluable skill, even if one never leaves Israel. For instance, most educated adult Israelis can speak English quite well, and many of them need it for their jobs, even if their jobs never involves them leaving Israel. Carmel (האהוב), for instance, has never visited the United States, but because his job involves shepherding around a bunch of clueless Americans (such as myself), needs to (and does) speak fluent English for his job. Carmel's job is exceptional, though (so is Carmel, by the way <3); most Israelis don't need to work with silly anglophones every day, but their jobs still require them to have such a skill. Galit, for instance, the mother of my host family, works in the police department here in Ramla, and needs to be able to speak in English frequently enough that its a job requirement for her. Israelis living in such cities in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, especially if they work in places frequented by foreigners (such as bars and restaurants), need to be able to speak at least passable English, and many Israelis find it personally beneficial to be able to speak English, whether it be to acquire significant others from America, or to enjoy English-language movies, television, and news. The point is, my student's comment that he is never intending to leave Israel, from my point of view, is illogical and meaningless; English can be valuable to him, even if he never leaves his hometown, let alone Israel. Knowledge of English can empower; this is the reason that I came halfway around the world in order to volunteer to teach it. I'm also, here, however, to inspire and to encourage. At my job interview in Chaifa on Wednesday, the presenter, Yoni (a woman's name, coincidentally the same as what my students call me) expressed this common phenomenon among Israeli students: when asked by a teacher to name their dreams and ambitions, most of them can't come up with anything. Everyone applying to that job, myself included, was there to change that; we all want to our students to ask instead, if they can write down two or three dreams, instead of just one. Maybe, I'll be lucky enough to do just that next year.
כִּי מֶה הֹוֶה לָאָדָם בְּכָל עֲמָלוֹ וּבְרַעְיוֹן לִבּוֹ שְׁהוּא עָמֵל תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ
One of the most prevalent problems I've seen, and students' principal blocks in their learning, is a certain mentality that they have, an unwillingness to admit that they don't know something. If I ask a typical student "do you understand," I will always receive the answer "yes," even if the answer is really "no." This makes it impossible for them to study, because they claim (and, I think, truly believe) that they are already fully fluent in English, even if they cannot even spell their own names in English, let alone understand anything that I say to them. This unwillingness sometimes achieves ridiculous proportions; I once sent a student back to class because he was acting up, but he reported to the teacher (and, I think, believed) that the reason that I had sent him back was because he already knew everything. In another case, a student refused to read a book that I gave to him, because he told me that he had already read it. Upon further investigation, he proved unable to either sound out a single one of the words written on the pages, or tell me what any of them meant (including such words as "the," "a," and "in") when I read them aloud to him. Again, I think that if he had been hooked up to a lie detector machine, he would not have tested positive when he told me that he had read and understood the entire book (which is indeed what he told me, in Hebrew). As terrible as it sounds, and in seeming opposition to my goal of improving students' confidence, feelings of self-worth, and independence, I first need to convince students that they have much to learn, so that they will be willing to work with me. I am thinking about asking the school Rabbi (with whom I am on good terms) to teach his students about Hillel's teaching from Pirkei Avot 2:5 -- "לא הבישן למד," "a person who is easily embarrassed cannot learn."
Another unexpected surprise in Israeli schools is the attitude towards cheating. Every school in which I have studied has anathematized cheating and plagiarism to the highest degree. Being caught cheating on a test would result in a score of zero on that test, plus a call home and possible suspension from school, in the case of grade school and high school; at the college level, plagiarism could result in expulsion from the university. Back at IHS, someone I knew was caught texting in the middle of an important standardized test, and received a zero. My advisor in college, the estimable Prof. Hull, once told me about a tribunal she had sat on for student who had cited a source accurately, but (quite unintentionally) had placed quotation marks too early in her own text, thus implying that some of the source's words were really her own. In contrast to this rigid nonacceptance of cheating in American education, Israeli students cheat quite frequently. They do this mostly by (quite unabashedly) solutions while in the middle of taking a test. There is even a feeling of obligation among stronger students to "help" other students in this way; one of my strongest students once complained to me about how busy he was "helping" other students after he had finished his own test; another time, a student yelled at me for trying to take his test away. He had been feeding answers to his classmate, and, when I told him that that was unacceptable, he replied to me that the other student had asked (as if he were therefore obligated to give his classmate the answers). I have had students not just become angry and upset with me, but genuinely yell at me, when I don't give them test solutions. I have seen students rag on teachers for solutions or hints, because they know that, sometimes, teachers simply cave in (and, really, what teacher wants his or her students to fail? You need an iron will to teach). My roommates do not encounter this level of absurdity at their school, I know, perhaps because their school is at a somewhat higher academic level than mine (theirs is not a religious school). For me, days on which tests are given are the worst, because I am in constant antagonism to the widespread cheating that goes on throughout the testing period. Test days bring out the worst in my students, which is painful for student and teacher alike. By contrast, Veta has told me that the days on which she gives tests to students are the easiest, because even students who normally behave poorly act docilely.
וְשָׂנֵאתִי אֶת הַחַיִּים כִּי רַע עָלַי הַמַּעֲשֶׂה שֶׁנַּעֲשָׂה תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ כִּי הַכֹּל הֶבֶל וּרְעוּת רוּחַ
Of everything I see at my school, though, nothing is as painful to me as the self-loathing in which some of my students engage. I see it only among the eighth-grade males, and it probably has something to do with going through puberty. One student, for instance, upon my suggestion that he could do well on the next test, if he studied, insisted that he never does well, because he is stupid (in response, I had him write "I am smart" for himself on the first and last pages of his notebook). I have seen other students act rather cruelly to this student in particular, making fun of the fact that he is fat (which led me, at first to very strongly identify with him and his problem -- I was also fat when I was in middle school). Still this is individual self-hatred, and it is an entirely different scale than the self-hatred that I see among this student's Ethiopian Jewish classmates. Before I go any further, I need to clarify something: in my experience, my Ethiopian Jewish students are just as likely to be strong or weak as the others. I really can't notice any social or academic difference between students of different regional descent in any of my grades. Sometimes the Ethiopians are closest to other Ethiopians; at other times, they are closer to non-Ethiopians. Bear in mind that even though they have different skin tones all of the students in Rambam are Jewish, and all of them are at least partially conscious of their shared Jewishness. The eighth grade male Ethiopians, however, have formed an almost gang-like consciousness; part of this consciousness is that they treat themselves as if they are animals. Quite recently, I had one of my eighth-grade student stare me down, snarl at me, and try to intimidate me, and I was quite worried that he was going to try to bite me. He did not, but he, as well as his classmates, are frequently found wandering around the halls of the school picking fights, frequently with students younger and smaller than themselves. They see themselves as sub-human because of their skin, and refer to each other by the Hebrew slur Ethiopian, sometimes also using the American slur, too, the only English that some of them seem to have absorbed. I worry constantly about what is going to happen to these students when they get older, when they join the army, and when each one of them finds himself with an M-16 slung over his shoulder. Will they do the right thing with that power? Will they even have a concept of "the right thing" left in them four years down the road? I have tried sometimes to spend time with them, to make them feel less miserable in school, and have usually had my offers thrown back in my face. At this point, they don't want to have anything to do with me, and I can't force them to do so. Meanwhile, I look at my seventh-graders, and hope desperately, that they will not adopt the same attitude. I'm not just hoping, though; I'm also teaching them English.
"אֱלֹהִיםשׁוֹפֵט צַדִּיק וְאֵל זֹעֵם בְּכָל יוֹם"
If many of the students in this particular cross-section see themselves as "animals," then many of the other Jews with whom I meet in Israeli society view Arabs as "animals." I am not using this term idly; I have heard an adult man (for whom I have respect) exclaim that the Arabs are animals. The younger generation has picked up on this sentiment from their elders; on my first day at school, while we were waiting at the bus stop for TZ to arrive, a student told me that the Arabs are the cause of the problems in Lod. I know that at least a couple of my students attend Rambam because their parents do not want them to come in contact with Arab children. I cannot fully express how upsetting this is. Because I work at an all-Jewish school (for the record, not by choice, but because it was decided by my program that TZ and I were the best Fellows to teach at Rambam), my main interaction with Arabs here is at the Underground club on Monday evenings. About half of my regular students are Arabs, and my interaction with them differs in no way from my interaction with my non-Arab students. As I mentioned in the last post, I even had a moment of "revenge against the system" when I insisted on holding classes for my Arab students, even though it was technically a Jewish holiday (Shushan Purim), because I'm so sick of not having my own holidays recognized back in the U.S. Perhaps it's because I'm not Israeli, and not as emotionally invested in the country that I can afford to feel this way; I have no grudge against Arabs or against Muslims (most of my Muslim friends from High School and Cornell are non-Arab), yet I am surrounded by a society that does. I have never served in the IDF; nobody in my family has ever been murdered by terrorists, or fallen in one of Israel's historic wars with its Arab neighbors. I'm proud to be a strong Zionist, but this nauseating anger isn't Zionism; it's just hatred.
וַיַּעֲבֹר יְהֹוָה | עַל פָּנָיו וַיִּקְרָא יְהֹוָה | יְהֹוָה אֵל רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם וְרַב חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת
I don't know how to solve this or any of the other problems I am confronted with daily. Right now, I'm continuing to teach, and hoping to open students' minds, just a little bit. It took students long enough to even accept me as Jewish. They had never met (or, I suppose, conceived of) Jews who hadn't already made aliyah to Israel, and, for my first months here, my Judaism was suspect among the students (for instance, they didn't know whether to count me for a minyan, and asked me questions such as "אתה גוי?," and not in the friendliest manner, either). It's not a lot of progress, but it's something. If I am lucky enough to be accepted to the job to which I applied this past week, I will have two to three more years left to make a difference. But I will need to use it well.
חג שמח!
~JD
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